Inspector Queen’s Own Case

He let the bitter voice run on. His silence finally stopped her.

“You’re keeping something from me,” she said slowly. “Does Finner’s murder have something to do with my baby?”

“Miss Coy.” He stopped. Then he said, “Miss Coy, don’t you know about the baby, either?”

“Know? About my baby?” The girl clutched the arms of her chair. “Know what, Inspector?”

“Don’t you know who bought your baby from Finner?”

“No. That was part of the deal. I had to sign all kinds of papers Finner pushed in front of me. Promise never to try to find out who the adopters were. Promise never to look for him.” She jumped up. “You know who they are! Who are they? Tell me! Please?”

“A millionaire Massachusetts couple with a summer home in Connecticut and an apartment in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Alton K. Humffrey.”

Her mascara had run, and she kept blinking at him, blinking as if she could not stop. Suddenly she went over to the end table and snatched a cigarettete from an open box. Her gesture pushed the book lying there into Jessie’s lap. The girl turned away, thumbing a table lighter savagely.

“Tell me more,” she said. “These Humffreys. They bought my baby from Finner, and what happened? Because something happened, I know it. What was it, Inspector?”

He glanced at Jessie.

“Well, Miss Coy, I’ll tell you—”

“I’ll tell her, Richard.” Jessie got up, holding the book, and went close to the girl. “Take a good drag, Miss Coy. This is going to be very hard. I was your baby’s nurse in the Humffrey household. He’s dead.”

She touched the girl’s shoulder.

Connie Coy turned around. Her lips were apart and the smoldering cigarette was dangling from her lower lip. Jessie took it from her mouth and put it in an ash tray.

“You may as well hear the rest of it,” Richard Queen muttered. “Your baby was murdered.”

“Murdered...?”

Jessie lunged, and he bounced forward. But the girl pushed their arms blindly aside, went over to the wing chair, sat down on the edge with her hands clasped between her knees, staring.

Jessie hurried into the kitchen. She came back with a glass of water.

“Drink this.”

Connie Coy sipped mechanically, still staring.

“No, that’s enough. Murdered. When did it happen?”

“August 4th, a Thursday night,” the old man said. “Over three weeks ago. Didn’t you read about the death of a child named Michael Stiles Humffrey up on Nair Island, in Connecticut? It was in all the papers.”

“So that’s the name they gave him. Michael. I always called him just Baby. In my thoughts, I mean. Michael...” She shook her head, as if the name meant nothing to her. “Papers? No, I guess I didn’t. Thursday night, August 4th... I left for Chicago on the 5th. I was busy packing, I didn’t get a paper that Friday. I didn’t see a New York paper all the time I was away.” She shook her head again, violently this time. “It’s so confusing. You know? Getting hit this way... Murdered... All this time I’ve kept kidding myself it was for his good, the advantages he’d have, and never knowing he was illegitimate. How he’d grow up tall and happy and well adjusted, and... And he’s murdered. At two months old.” She laughed. “It’s crazy, man, crazy.”

She threw her head back and laughed and laughed. Jessie let her laugh it through. After a while the girl stopped laughing and said, “Can I have a cigarette?”

“I wish I had a good stiff drink to give you,” Jessie said. She lit a cigarette and put it between the girl’s lips. “How about some coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’m all right.” She seemed completely composed, as if the laughter, the enormous hazel stare, had never happened. “Let’s get this straight. A rich couple named Humffrey bought my baby from Finner. The baby was murdered. A couple of weeks later Finner was murdered. I don’t see the connection.”

“We don’t know yet why the little tyke was murdered, Connie.” The Inspector dragged a chair over to her and sat down eagerly. “But the way we see it, Finner got it because he was the only outsider who knew the baby’s real parentage. A while ago you said you didn’t know how Finner found out you were pregnant — you supposed one of the girls at the club you were singing in suspected and sold him the information. Did you have any real reason for believing that?”

“No,” she said slowly. “I never let on to anybody, and it certainly didn’t show at that time. But it’s the only way I can imagine Finner got to know it.”

“It isn’t likely. But there’s one way Finner could have found out that is likely. Connie, tell me: Did the man who got you pregnant know it?”

Her eyes flickered.

“Yes,” she said. “I told him. He wanted me to go to some dirty abortionist. But I was afraid. So then he bowed out.” She shrugged. “I didn’t blame him. It was my own fault. I thought I loved him and found out I didn’t when it was too late. I knew all the time he was married.” Then she said, “Pardon me for going into my memoirs. You were saying?”